When one chooses to look at a piece of art
from a Freudian viewpoint, most times the comparison is rather far flung
and many times the work may have had nothing to do with Freud in the mind
of the artist that wrote it; however, Max Ernst was a student of psychology
in the early twentieth century and studied Freud. Many of the components
of Ernst’s art can also be seen through modern science and psychology,
such as theories of Freud: chance, the subconscious, condensation and juxtaposition
and then these ideas can be applied to the evaluation of his works, Oedipus
Rex and The Hat Makes the Man. The first idea to be discussed is that
of chance. Within Dada, chance played a major role, and for Ernst
it was important as well. Chance can be said to be the act of employing
random, accidental stimuli to awaken patterns within the subconscious of
the artist and in turn the artist can record these patterns at the conscience
level. Chance is a method of arriving at some sort of destination
or conclusion without allowing oneself to color the work with the faults
of human perception and taint it with quotidian ideas of what reality is
and should be. He was trying to find a technique of representation
beyond techniques of the time and this did not simply determine the tone
of his work, but it became an in disposable part of the work.
Ernst was trying to see the world with “closed eyes” , representing his
wishes to tap into the underlying meanings behind the real: to dig into
the subconscious and express that super reality, which to the Dadaists
and even more so to the Surrealists, would be a higher vision of truth.
This higher vision of truth was almost always seen to come from uncontrollable
sources, such as the subconscious mind, desires, dreams and such, which
are all very much a part of Freud.The idea of chance is a key element in Ernst’s
collages. The collage is an arrangement of found objects, found meaning
randomly collected, and then are assembled in a sort of “chance meeting”
often in a strange sort of association that tends to represent the subconscious,
which was a key part of many of Freud’s works. Ernst was a student
of abnormal psychology from 1910 to 1914 at the University of Bonn and
he has been noted as reading many of Freud’s works in Bonn during this
time and among the two most influential were Jokes and Their Relation to
the Unconscious and The Interpretation of Dreams. Chance is
actually a vehicle through which the unconscious mind can be explored and
it also served as a way for the Ernst and other artists in the Dadaist
and Surrealist movements to access forms and themes which would attempt
to dissolve ties to the material, representative world of the old art.A common theme running through Ernst’s works
is that of a polarization of meanings and objects and a condensation of
meaning, which occurs through that process or polarizing. It is the
association between the constructive and the destructive, the rational
and irrational, the beautiful and the ugly, the dead and alive, sight and
not seeing which defines the experience of the juxtaposition of Ernst.
The juxtaposition of disparate images has an intense visual presence and
influence in many of the collages. The association between objects
like birds and people have a connotation that is not easily understandable,
but at the same time is related enough to evoke emotions such as terror,
disbelief, and confusion. These images also evoke an idea of the
dream and the subconscious mind.Condensation is a mechanism proposed by Freud
by which condenses multiple words most of his work. Using condensation,
Ernst took images that did not expressly belong together and he forced
them into strange associations and juxtaposed them to bring new meanings
to the materials and images involved. This is much like Freud did
when he proposed the idea of condensation, but he was using word associations.
According to Freud, condensation is the pushing together of two or more
words into a new word of phrase so that each original elements keeps its
own nature while still playing off the others. A good example
would be the word “alcoholidays”, which is an association between the holiday
season and the secular drunkenness through which they are approached today.
Ernst took this idea and used it to create intense images that interact
in extraordinary ways.The first work to be looked at is that of Ernst’s
Oedipus Rex. This work is innately Freudian just in name, let alone
in content. The Oedipus complex is one of the most well recognized
components of Freudian theory and it is seen in this work names after it
in many ways. The first is through the process of condensation.
This can be seen as the bird headed man, which shows up in many of Ernst’s
images: the association in this image between the man and the bird is the
desire of man to be free from the inhibitions imposed upon him by society,
and despite the fact that these two still retain their separate identities,
they are consistent with Freud’s ideas. In the case of this
work, the head is removed from the body, showing a detachment from true
feeling and true understanding of life. Another Freudian idea is
the use of the joke, which is seen in the treatment of several of the objects
in this work. Such as the contrast and juxtaposition of the wall,
the over-sized fingers, upside down eyes on the birds, and the balloon
in the aft of the painted collage. Several other associations
relating this work to Freud can be drawn as well.This work has intense sexual undercurrents.
The nut represents the female and the crack in the nut is a symbol for
the vulva. The cracking of the nut by the hands of a male is
a metaphor for sexual intercourse and also gender roles in traditional
patriarchal cultures. The idea of the treatment of woman and of her
place within society is also visible in another piece by Ernst, The Tottering
Woman. In this piece, he addresses the constraints in which woman
are held in the world and the patriarchy that she must deal with on a daily
basis. It also touches upon the objectification of woman as well.
Hoffman also theorizes that the squeezing of the nut has implications of
sadomasochistic roles as the nut is being dominated and crushed, the spike
is punishing the hand equally and finally, once forced open, the “nut”
could always snap back shut, injuring the index finger and thereby is a
signifier of neurotic sexual attachment. The bird head in towards
the back of the picture plane is tethered by some sort of rope, which could
be seen as societal restrictions on deviant sexuality and possibly is a
reaction to the taboo associated with incest. Additionally, the arrow
as it pierces the shell of the nut could be seen as a phallic signifier
or also as a representation for the idea of love and then a refutation
of the existence of love within the constraints of sexual desire and sexuality.
The imagery in this piece by Ernst is intensely psychosexual in nature
and content and can be seen mostly in those terms.In defense of picking Oedipus Rex to write about
in the context of collage, it is true that it is an oil painting, but its
imagery was taken from print sources and then was transposed into the work
by the act of painting them. The nut squeezing image was taken from
an article entitled “Experience sur l’ elasticite, faite avec une noix,”
from the popular 19th century French Magazine La Nature.The second artwork, The Hat Makes the Man, is
very much a discourse on the effects of socio-economic factors and sexuality.
In terms of referring to socio-economic status, the hats pictured in the
collage are represent of different classes of people. There are hats
that are indicative of what a farmer would wear in the fields as sun protection,
hats that resemble what a sailor would wear, hats that are casual wear
from gentry, top hats for formal occasions, simple hats for poor industrial
workers, and a hat for about every “type of man”. The stacked arrangement
of these hats could be seen as a hierarchy of status and of the lack of
freedom and social mobility that was being slowly destroyed during this
time period.The deeper psychological meaning of the hats
is much more Freudian in nature. It is a discussion of the importance
of fashion on sexuality. The brightly colored lines and columns are
ironically sexual when put against the hats cut from a catalogue.
The columns or tubes could also be seen as a representation of the vagina.
A translation of the writing in the bottom corner of the work reveals an
interesting meaning that Ernst envisioned for the collage. It reads,
“the hat makes the man, the style is the tailor,” this simple saying can
be seen as a suggestion of the phallic nature of man and how the hat functions
in that sphere. Ernst sees modern man as a sexuality that is repressed
and that this comes through his clothes no matter the circumstance.
The phallic nature of the hat only serves to reinforce the idea of the
completion of man is his sexuality and his penis. The hat is a signifier
of man, while there are men’s hats and women’s hats; they serve as a differentiator
of gender and sexual roles. The entire work is an interpretation
of what Freud said about fashion as totem’s and the taboo of society.
This conclusion supports the thesis of Ernst’s works being intensely psychological
in their basis and content and supports the idea that Freudian psychology
was a strong base for Ernst in his use of collage and of art in general.It was this exploration by Ernst of sexuality
in late Dada and Early Surrealism that would lead to some of the intensely
perverse, deviant images created later, such as the mannequins of Man Ray
and the doll’s Balmer along with so many of the paintings done by artists
such as Dali. Ernst laid the basis for these later developments with
his explorations in chance, the subconscious, and condensation joined with
juxtaposition as well as with his use of sexuality and gender within a
framework of Freud. His collages, which were his attempt at abandoning
the traditionally artist creation and his work with found images, always
working to keep their unique meaning would later be highly influential.

Books on Max Ernst:

Ernst,
by Jose Maria Faerna. Economical monograph from Abradale's Great Modern
masters series.

Max
Ernst, by Edward Quinn. The definitive monograph, hardcover in a slipcase
mirrors the quality of the text and reproductions.

Max
Ernst: 1891-1976, by Urlich Bischoff. From Taschen, the best value
for anintroductory monograph on the life and work of Max Ernst.